The BLAKE Drains are white, radiopaque silicone drains with four channels along the sides with a solid core center. Their other components consist of a silicone hub, a silicone extension tubing and an adapter. The drains are available either 3/4 fluted (hub outside skin) or full fluted (hub inside skin) and with or without a trocar.

JP drain: The original suction drain. The drain itself is inside the body. It is made of Teflon and has multiple drainage holes. The drain is connected to clear plastic tubing which is usually sutured to the skin at the point it leaves the skin. The tubing connects to a bulb reservoir. The bulb, when squeezed empty, applies constant suction to the drain and pulls the fluid out of the body. The drain is removed when the excess fluid has stopped draining from the body. A JP drain may be used, for example, for abdominal or thoracic drainage. JP stands for Jackson-Pratt.

What sagarcia said is right to me. Now, a while back our cardiac surgeons would use a blake drain to the pleural space in their patients. When the nurses d/c's the chest tubes, the blake drain STAYED in and we attached a JP bulb to it!! Hah!! A combination of the two!! LOL Probably doesn't help much to clear it up. LOL

I'm also agreeing with sagarcia- we use both in our OR and they are two distinct animals. If you would look at a cross-section of the blake it looks a little like one of the cross logos on a "west coast chopper" tee shirt. The J-P, however is a round perforated tube or a rectangular perforated "ribbon" (Flat vs round J-P) Both attatch to either the grenade bulb or a hemovac and the only way to tell which drain is in place is by seeing it outside the pt or reading the op-record. It really doesn't matter too much as far as the post op care goes.

JPs (Jackson-Pratts) are flat. Blakes are round. Most everybody requests a JP in the OR, and that's what most of us are used to---not sure where in the country they are used to using Blakes instead of JPs, but apparently some docs have trained with Blakes and are used to them. Where I last worked, we stocked both, but I can't recall anyone ever specifically requesting a Blake--they soon got used to JPs when they started working there. The Blakes just gathered dust.